I'm the founding partner of Proteus International, and author of Growing Great Employees, Being Strategic, and Leading So People Will Follow. You can follow me on Twitter @erikaandersen. My websites are erikaandersen.com, and www.proteus-international.com. I'm insatiably curious. I love figuring out how people, situations and objects work, and how they could work better: faster, smarter, deeper, with greater satisfaction, more affection, and a higher fun quotient.

How The Best Leaders Are Kicking Everyone Else's...Results

Historically, most senior leadership teams have focused primarily on doing one or both of these two things: 1) beating the competition, 2) making more money.

But in today’s business climate, these may be the wrong places to look for success.

I just read an interview with Larry Page, co-founder of GoogleGoogle, in Wired Magazine. The theme of the article is Larry’s focus on “10x” improvements – doing things ten times better than anything else that’s available. Throughout the article, it’s clear that Page is thinking mostly about this; about what he calls “moon shots” – new products or services that meet consumers’ needs in brand-new ways. He actively dismisses the idea that beating the competition is the best place to focus:

If you read the media coverage of our company, or of the technology industry in general, it’s always about the competition. The stories are written as if they are covering a sporting event. But it’s hard to find actual examples of really amazing things that happened solely due to competition. How exciting is it to come to work if the best you can do is trounce some other company that does roughly the same thing? That’s why most companies decay slowly over time.

Instead , it’s clear that Page is thinking most about 1) how to give people what they need and want, and 2) how to break out of old ways of doing things. And that he believes that if he and Google keep figuring out how to do those two things, they’ll make tons of money and not have to worry much about the competition.

Think about some of the most enormously successful CEOs in the world: Jeff Bezos, Meg Whitman, Steve Jobs, Tony Hsieh, Vineet Nayar. Read anything they’ve said publicly; talk to people who’ve worked for them. Their focus is the same as Page’s: exceeding the customers’ expectations and figuring out how to do that in ways no one has done before.

For example, at a management retreat I facilitated about six months ago, one of the guest speakers was Anthony Bay, head of video at Amazon. His talk wasn’t about beating Netflix, or about Amazon’s market share or how they intended to increase profits. He shared how every decision they make starts and ends with the customer. He said, for instance, that when they were deciding whether or not to do “Amazon Prime,” Bezos just kept asking everyone questions like: “How will this serve the customer?” ”Will this benefit our customers?” “Will this attract new customers?”

Please understand, I’m not suggesting that these folks don’t worry about their companies’ financials, or make it their business to understand exactly what their competition is doing – it’s simply that these two things are not their main focus.

There are a bunch of reasons why this approach works:

Customers are the best “north star”: This may seem obvious, but appealing to customers is the lifeblood of any business. You can’t go too far wrong by spending most of your time trying to understand their needs and wants, and figuring out how best to respond to them in a way that provides the highest mutual benefit – that best meets their needs and allows your business to prosper.

Today’s world requires more than incremental change. As Page points out in the Wired interview, “It’s natural for people to want to work on things that they know aren’t going to fail. But incremental improvement is guaranteed to be obsolete over time. Especially in technology, where you know there’s going to be non-incremental change.” I agree: in this day and age, companies that are content to focus on small improvements will be left behind. Period.

People are engaged by the quest for greatness. I know very few employees who get excited by a bit more EBITDA. Most good employees want to do good work that makes a difference. Giving excellent customer service, doing things no one has done before, finding new solutions to old problems — companies that do these things are much more likely to attract and retain great people, and to get the best of their thinking and their effort.

Certainly the best leaders I work with, and for whom I have the most respect, think more about the customer than the competition, more about breaking new ground than inching up profits. So why do so many leaders still mono-focus on increasing profit and dominating the competition? What is it that convinces most leaders that this is the true path to success?

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Fantastic article. I couldn’t agree more. I think what’s challenging most leaders out there is the new tech that keeps coming out and the ability to keep up with it. It’s also the will to accept new things, too many figure their way is the only way no matter what anyone says. Cliche, I know but its true. We see it and live it every day. Also to be honest, I think too many are loving the “Status Quo”.

Funny enough I just had made a comment to my coworker on the importance on focusing on customers behaviours rather than the short term bottom line. I believe that if we can focus on providing true and honest customer service and not doing just for the sake of earning customers/sales, we can honestly beef up that long term profit. We need to stay open minded and use technology as a tool and keep developing that tool to meet our needs as a business and to satisfy our customers.

We can’t control what someone will buy but we can control how much they have access to us, either by main stream marketing models or by newly innovative initiatives. We need to create easily accessible channels for the consumer to reach us, give them the opportunities and let them choose how they want to talk to us. In return we can only gather information/data to assist them better.

Thank you! I love your line “We can’t control what someone will buy but we can control how much they have access to us.” And then we can have a lot of control over what their experience is, once they have that access. Great comment…

I believe as long as your focus is bringing value to lives of others, you will not need to focus on your own profits, because your profits become a by product of your intent. A start up company’s intent should be to bring added value to its clients, create jobs and grow. I think one of the biggest problems businesses face in this day and time is the lack of knowledge and trust in new technologies, backed by a generation with little experience trying to convince companies of their own knowledge when it comes to profits and loss. I would like to see the owners of these companies begin to realize there is a difference in new technology and making business decisions that drive profits. Their motivation, drive and trusting their instincts got them to where they are and can take them further if they will just find trust in themselves.

Great thinking and there are many potential reasons why so many leaders still mono-focus on increasing profit and dominating the competition? Fear might be one. Having had success using this strategy the fear of trying something new and risking failure can be enormous. Fear can also compromise our thinking capacity. Another potential reason is our unconscious tendency to default to what we know – the path of least resistance. Lastly, I would say that there is the potential loss associated with change. When we change things we risk losing a lot. For some it a loss of identity as an expert and there are many other potential potential losses that can result from change than can cause some to stick with the tried and true.

Excellent leadership article! If we focus on the competition, we are just operating out of fear. It limits thinking and restricts the ambitions of your organisation and your team. Instead, by being bold and acting on your core belief of customer focus and care, this will empower your organisation and team to really excel. Love the “10x” improvement approach.

Erika- I couldn’t agree more with you. Sometimes we worry too much about our competition and our profitability that we forget our NUMBER ONE FOCUS AND TOTAL REASON FOR EXISTENCE: OUR CUSTOMER. If we solve his/her needs and provide what he/she wants in a professional and customer friendly manner, we won’t have to worry about the competition or the profitability because in most cases we’ll bury our competitors and, if we treat our customers right, we’ll be profitable in the process. That, to me, is a win-win for both parties. The customer gets what he/she wants and needs and is highly satisfied and well taken care of and, most importantly, will return when he/she has future wants or needs. We win in that we’ve built and/or strengthened our customer relationship, eliminated the threat of our competition and made some money in the process. However, the most important thing we achieved was to strengthen the relationship because that person will tell his/her friends about the wonderful experience he/she had with us and, believe me, money can’t buy that. We have to drill that constantly into our employees. Everyday, each one of us is “the president” of the company to the public. Erika, it’s a pleasure reading your articles…one of these days I’ll have to tell you why.